133) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 12: You are strong enough
If it’s been hard to read this, I’m sorry. But if it’s the truth, then it’s the truth.
This can change. You are strong enough. Your ancestors made sure of that.
110) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 4: Healing, when you hate yourself
In any case, you’re going to hate Backlash. And you’re going to feel like Backlash hates you too. No matter how many times you make excellent, rock-solid plans to “get better”, Backlash is, for sure, going to come along and screw them all up. That’s just what it does. Asking it not to is like asking a dog not to wag its tail or a cat not to act superior to the idiotic dog wagging its tail.
103) From Shitty-ness to Wellness: Part 3 - The Self-Improvement Treadmill and Its Perpetuation of Trauma
As you go through life and learn more about yourself, you may at some point decide to really take your well-being into your own hands, and DO SOMETHING about it. Some people succeed spectacularly in this quest, or at least it seems that way on Instagram. But no small number of us try, and try, and try, year after year, with our self-improvement goals and checklists and resolutions and vision boards and buddy systems and therapists and support groups and exercise programs and gurus and mindfulness leaders and spiritual books and self-help trends. And the next year, we’re still at it. Then the next decade.
102) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 2 - Stigmatization and the disempowerment of the struggling
When you find yourself struggling with mental illness, the “personal responsibility” mantra all-too-often reinforces the already-deeply-internalized sense that there is “something wrong with you”. Society’s stigmatization of those who struggle with mental health, coheres so seamlessly with that “inner critic” that it starts to seem accurate.
101) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 1 - Some Personal Thoughts on the Journey out of Hell
It doesn’t matter where you are or where you’ve been, in the sense that there is no value in judging yourself for that. It matters where you are heading, what direction you are pointing yourself in. If you’re pointing yourself towards wellness, honesty, healing, growth, then you deserve an inner standing ovation. Well done, hero-in-training! Well done.
96) Abuse, Trauma, Shame, and Healing
In an upcoming series of posts, I am going to explore the dynamics of the inner monster that seems to doom so many people to suffer lives of loneliness and limitation — Shame.
As we go through these posts, we’ll explore where Shame comes from, what it feels like, how it works, and how to heal and be transformed by it in a “positive” way.
Some of the posts will be experientially-written, poetic, descriptive or metaphoric. Some will be analytical and theoretical. Some will be practical, like a Wikihow article.
My goals/hopes are to touch your heart, sharpen your understanding, and help you build a skillset to heal from shame and free yourself.